SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – Health Minister Fenton Ferguson says $150 million will be spent on upgrading work at the Santa Cruz Health Centre and the Black River Hospital over the next two to three years.

Following a recent tour of the facilities, Ferguson told journalists that the Santa Cruz Health Centre, currently a Type Three facility, will be elevated to a centre of excellence or Type Five centre, at a cost of $100 million. The work will be done in stages, Ferguson said.

The Government’s information arm, the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) reported Ferguson as saying that the additional $50 million will be spent on the hospital.

“We intend to do some specific activities,” the JIS quoted Ferguson as saying in relation to the hospital.

“Already, we have spent over $7 million on the paediatric ward. For phase two of that ward, the sum of $6.5 million will be spent to complete that project. We will also provide an incubator, which is in the region of $850,000. There is a sewage project that is a part of an overall national response of $250 million, (and) of that sum, Black River Hospital will benefit from a sum of over $20 million to respond to situations,” he said.

Additionally, Ferguson said, during 2013/14 the outpatient ward will be upgraded at a cost of $19.9 million and $3.5 million will go to repairing a water storage tank.

Regarding the health centre in Santa Cruz, the health minister said the expansion and upgrading project would begin with an initial spend of $25 million.

“Taking it to its final stages will require an additional $75 million,” he said. “The intention is that, that figure will be rolled in over the next two years, so that we will be able at the end of that time, to have a first-class/first-world primary centre that is in keeping with excellence and in keeping with the Government’s priority for the renewal of primary health care.”

The Government’s thrust to upgrade health centres across the country was to ensure first-class service to citizens and relieve the burden on hospitals, he said.

“Part of the strategy of renewal speaks to not just the emphasis on primary health care, but on the relationship between primary health and secondary care, and tertiary care. We want to be in a position to be able to do a seamless referral from primary to secondary,” Ferguson said.

“What we want is to create at the community level… an opportunity for patients and clients to recognise that there is a real choice in attending a health centre that will allow our hospitals to do the more complicated procedures,” he added.

Member of Parliament for North East St Elizabeth Raymond Pryce told the Jamaica Observer Central of his expectation that once the improvements at the Santa Cruz facility are completed “some of the (patient) traffic from the Mandeville and Black River hospitals will be diverted there…”

Pryce said he was in touch with potential donors overseas and locally, as part of a drive to build partnerships to support the health centre.